Monday, June 9, 2014

“Are there too many people for our environment?”

This
is the monologue for the
latest episode of Why? Radio. The topic was the same as the question
above: "Are there too many people for our environment?" You can hear the whole
episode online here.

North Dakota is the nineteenth biggest state in the
U.S. It is roughly the same size as Washington and it is bigger than Florida.
But while Florida houses nineteen and a half million people and Washington has
seven million, North Dakota has only about 700,000. If you plan even a little
bit, you can go a long time without seeing anyone else.

This freaks my mother-in-law out. She’s from North
Carolina, a smaller state with a much larger population. When she walks around
Grand Forks, she likes to ask where all the people are, and my wife always responds
“these ARE all the people, Mom.”Yet
even with its smaller size and ten million people, North Carolina still has plenty
of places where you can hide. Eric Rudolph, the fugitive Olympic Park bomber,
lived in the Appalachian Mountains for five years before he was apprehended.

So, with all of this said, it may seem odd to have a
discussion about overpopulation, or, rather, it may seem strange to assume that
it’s an American problem. Sure, if we look at pictures of Karachi or Mumbai we
can see it, but that’s not here. That’s there.

There are two responses to the skeptics, but the
first is bizarrely unpersuasive. We only have one world, and a problem for one
person is a problem for everybody. Why do I call this bizarrely unpersuasive?
Because it’s true and we should care, but we don’t. America still feels large,
open, and available, and since we don’t experience it as crowded, we don’t act.

Philosophers remind us that justification is
different than motivation; that just because we know something is true doesn’t
mean we’ll act on it. We all understand that cigarettes will kill us, but people
smoke anyway. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, and
as a result, environmentalists have two different jobs, to persuade us that
they are right and to inspire us to do something about it. But these are very
different skill sets and they are usually found in very different groups of
people. Here, a philosophical problem is intensified by a practical one.

The second response to skepticism about overpopulation
is to prove our perceptions wrong, to get us all to doubt our experience of our
country as abundant. How can America have too many people if our states have so
much land? Here, the problem is that the term “overpopulated” is ambiguous. We
need an independent standard to tell us how many is too many and that is what
our guest today will offer. He is going to claim that empirically, objectively,
our environment simply cannot sustain the next generation. There aren’t enough
resources, there is tremendous natural devastation, and there is less and less
wilderness every day. If we don’t lower the population, he’s going to insist,
we are all doomed.

I suspect, however, that even our most open-minded
listeners will resist his position because there is an even deeper motivation
to look away. Accepting facts also means embracing moral responsibilities. Philosophers
have shown us time and again that once we identify a moral wrong, we are
obligated to fix it. This is why the U.S. Government rarely uses the term
genocide, because once it does, we have to protect the victims. This is also
why so many people refuse to say they are sorry after they hurt someone; once
they apologize, they have to make up for the pain.

The same is true of overpopulation. Once we accept
that it’s real, we are faced with some very serious questions about immigration
and refugees, about contraception and abortion, about consumption and
inequality. And once we ask those, we’re faced with even more intimate dilemmas.
Which one of our friends do we wish hadn’t come to this country? Which one of
our kids do we wish weren’t born? Of course, we can’t rewrite the past, but
those unwelcomed new Americans, those children that were never conceived, they
feel real. They are sacrifices. And maybe this is why so many people refuse to
accept that human-caused climate change is real. Once we do, we have to fix it,
and fixing it feels way too hard and way too disruptive.

The thing is, there is a case to be made that
overpopulation trumps everything else, even individual rights. The democratic
world has spent much of the last two centuries arguing for the integrity of
each individual, but environmentalism may turn us all into utilitarians. It may
force us to consider the needs of everyone collectively before we concern
ourselves with particular people. So overpopulation is not just a practical
problem, nor is it simply political. It is a philosophical dilemma that
requires shifting our moral point of view, and that is never easy, even when we
have no choice.

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The is a blog written by Jack Russell Weinstein, the Director of the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life, the host of Why? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life, and a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Dakota. It is dedicated to the exploration of philosophy. Everyone can join in regardless of their expertise or credentials. Be thoughtful and respectful, courageous and interesting, and post your comments to converse with the world. And please, enjoy yourself.

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